Category Archives: Practice

I want to share a habit I’ve got into. It is a simple thing, perhaps a learned expression of empathy more than a magical technique, although the results can certainly be magical. You may want to think of other situations in which to apply it.

When I was younger, and less secure in myself, I felt rejection very easily. Perhaps too easily. I was also always the one in my relationships that wanted to cuddle all night long during sleep. Some of my partners would eventually feel discomfort spooning and need to change position. Often this meant sleeping seperately without cuddling. It was at this moment that I used to feel a pang of rejection. It wasn’t really conscious, I was often half asleep after all. Perhaps partially woken from my slumber by the act of separation. Or maybe I was having insomnia that night. I often do. And of course my partner during such times was also asleep and not really aware of my feelings. Nor could I reach out and tell them without waking them, which would be silly. This feeling of rejection, coupled with feeling silly about expressing it, lead to many nights of troubled insomnia. Or if I was already struggling to get to sleep it made things worse.

Now I often find myself in the opposite role. As much as I love cuddling, I sometimes get uncomfortable. My arm may go dead whilst spooning for example. Now I try to end the spooning before it gets that far, I can spot the early signs that it will. However, my memory of early feelings of rejection have lead me to express a simple ‘I love you’ during the repositioning, so it is understood there is no motive of rejection. Now I don’t actually know if Dana needs this in the same way my younger sensitive self did. I’m not sure they know that either. But I do know that they respond warmly and possitively to the reaffirming of love at such moments.

To apply this practice, you might think of other times a loved one, family member or friend needs reassurance. Especially at times when they might mistake your actions for rejection. What value is empathy left unexpressed?

No area of magic other than cursing seems to attract as many warnings as the casting of love spells. These warnings go right back to folk tales spread via oral tradition. Most of us will have heard these tales of a desperate lover getting a spell cast on the object of the desire to have their love returned, only to turn them into a pathetic lifeless love slave no longer possessing the attributes the original lover wanted them for. Too late the procurer of the spell realises they don’t actually love this person at all. It is only then that they find out that the wily witch or wizard they purchased said spell from can cancel the spell, only for a much higher price…

In practise love spells need not be cast on a specific target. But even then one might consider treading with care. Mistakes in this area can cause much emotional upset for both yourself and the parties concerned. You may, for instance, have a particular interest in some hobby that a previous lover resented and tried to repress. So you may think it a good idea to cast a spell for a lover interested in the same thing. If successful you’ll probably have a lot of fun together for a while, but eventually you might notice your interest in the hobby wane, or you may find they’re simply much more fanatical about it than yourself, or that you share little else in common. For whatever reason you may simply find the relationship doesn’t quite work.

I strongly suspect that a part of this comes from holding an ideal that you hold your lover(s) up to and expect them conform to, rather than openly loving them for who they are and allowing them to grow freely. So how does one cast love spell without falling into these traps?

Generally casting spells to enhance ones own attractiveness and friendliness tend to go a long way, and many magical authors recommend this approach. Learning to love oneself and simply enjoy being single so that one isn’t tempted to enter a wrong relationship out of fear, hope or loneliness also go along way. But if you must cast a spell to find true love, let it be for that and that alone.

Last time I was single I turned to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, and Venus, her Roman equivalent and wished for nothing more than to find a lover with whom I could be true to myself and they could be true to themselves and we could live happily together. I think such an intent covers all bases really. I also promised Aphrodite that once I became convinced that I was in such a relationship, I would by a statue of her to put on a love altar.

Lolita had apparently cast a similar spell, or made a similar prayer, only to the Egyptian god Set, that I will let her describe in detail. When soon after we came together, at first we had no inkling that love lay in store. Our first contact began as aspiring film makers of mutual acquaintances, who might collaborate on a project or two together. Very quickly our friendship escalated into far more than that. Within a few months of first contact we had not only met each other despite living hundreds of miles from each other, but we were living with each other and moving to a new city together.

When Lolita and I became engaged we finally found a statue of a kind of Venus, a remarkable one at that. A sort of Japanese ‘Birth of Venus’ with octopus tentacles for hair and holding a fractal sea-shell above her head. We have so far been unable to ascertain if this is a Japanese goddess that resembles Venus, a Japanese sea spirit, or simply a Japanese interpretation of the classical goddess. Either way we often celebrate our love with a glass of Saki when working with the goddess these days…

Right here now you are free. There are no rules governing your behaviour. No law is holding you back. There are limits to your power, your capabilities, it is true. But the more important limits are those to your imagination, the straight jacket of habits, the manacles of fear.

You are already living in anarchy. Authority is an illusion. All the mad panoply of social forms arise from the fundamentals of communication, cooperation, and choice.

The problem is that we’ve all gotten in the habit of cooperating with people on an authoritarian trip. And we are afraid of the choices they will make with the power we have granted them, if we begin to choose differently.

So don’t communicate your choices to them. Choose to communicate with those who would cooperate with your freedom. Imagine our power together.

The Main Tonglen Practice

In the Tonglen practice of giving and receiving, we take on, through compassion all the various mental and physical sufferings of all beings: their fear, frustration, pain, anger, guilt, bitterness, doubt, and rage, and we give them, through love, all our happiness, and well-being, peace of mind, healing, and fulfillment.

1. Before you begin with this practice, sit quietly and bring your mind home. Then, making use of any of the exercises or methods I have described, whichever one you find really inspires you and works for you, meditate deeply on compassion. Summon and invoke the presence of all the buddhas, bodhisattvas, and enlightened beings, so that, through their inspiration and blessing, compassion may be born in your heart.

2. Imagine in front of you, as vividly and poignantly as possible, someone you care for who is suffering. Try and imagine every aspect of the person’s pain and distress. Then, as you feel your heart opening in compassion toward the person, imagine that all of his or her sufferings manifest together and gather into a great mass of hot, black, grimy smoke.

3. Now, as you breathe in, visualize that this mass of black smoke dissolves, with your in-breath, into the very core of your self-grasping at your heart. There it destroys completely all traces of self-cherishing, thereby purifying all your negative karma.

4. Imagine, now that your self-cherishing has been destroyed, that the heart of your enlightened mind, your Bodhicitta, is fully revealed. As you breathe out, then, imagine that you are sending out its brilliance, cooling light of peace, joy, happiness, and ultimate well-being to your friend in pain, and that its rays are purifying all their negative karma.

Here I find it inspiring to imagine, as Shantideva suggests, that your Bodhicitta has transformed your heart, or your whole body and being itself, into a dazzling, wish-fulfilling jewel, a jewel that can grant the desires and wishes of anyone, and provide exactly what he or she longs for and needs. True compassion is the wish-fulfilling jewel because it has the inherent power to give precisely to each being whatever that being most needs, and so alleviate his or her suffering, and bring about his or her true fulfillment.

5. So at the moment the light of your Buddha streams out to touch your friend in pain, it is essential to feel a firm conviction that all of his or her negative karma has been purified, and a deep, lasting joy that he or she has been totally freed of suffering and pain.

Then, as you go on breathing normally, in and out, continue steadily with this practice.

Practicing Tonglen on one friend in pain helps you to begin the process of gradually widening the circle of compassion to take on the suffering and purify the karma of all beings, and to give them all your happiness, well-being, joy, and peace of mind. This is the wonderful goal of Tonglen practice, and in a larger sense, of the whole path of compassion.

They are a nexus connecting to different spaces and joying the world of man with that of nature. To be under the bridge is to be outside the world and among the mechanisms that allow it to operate. It is a zone of multple flows, orthogonal at different layers.

The Lion’s Gate Bridge in vancouver has struts the shape of inguz and the perfect shade of green, The shade of growing, the colour of an open heart chakra. The colours and shapes I tattooed on my solar plexus.